Serving Kids Over Bureaucracy: Supt Walters Shares Free School Lunch Thinking as 2026 Opponent Objects
Mandate Serves Taxpaying Families, Untangles Red Tape and May Start National Trend: 90% of OK Schools Eligible for Funds to Feed All - Why Aren't They?
On July 7th, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R) announced Oklahoma’s PK-12 schools must feed all students and stop charging parents for student meals beginning next month. According to the release, “the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) will mandate that every school district fully funds student meals using existing state and federal operational dollars”.
OSDE meals mandate announcement:
Walters’ mandate also supports the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement by soon requiring “all meals/snacks served in Oklahoma’s schools are free of seed oils, artificial food dyes, ultra-processed foods, pesticide laden foods, and junk food vending machines to name a few”.
The mandate is unprecedented and immediately prompted scrutiny from the public education establishment, the legacy media and recent Bixby Superintendent Rob Miller, Walters’ assumed Republican primary opponent in the 2026 race for State Superintendent.
Public critics claim the mandate overreaches local control and districts lack the necessary funding though many have quietly adopted the premise that all students should be provided healthy, funded meals.
In response to Walters’ mandate, Miller publicly suggested a lengthy path to potentially feed all students that would include engaging a host of opinions and encouraging new legislation.
Walters says schools can feed all kids now with the unprecedented amount of public funding they already receive by shaving just a fraction from bloated administrative costs.
School funding can appear complex, so who’s speaking truth in this disagreement, and who’s fighting for Oklahoma families?
After researching, V1SUT sat down with Superintendent Walters to ask where this push came from. His answers reflect out-of-the-box thinking that places the parent perspective at the forefront of his agency’s decision-making processes and seeks to uncomplicate public education funding.
Free Lunch is Parent Driven Idea: Walters Explains Parents Already Footing School Lunch Bill Through Taxes
Walters says the idea to feed all students without additional charges came from parents. It began when a parent approached him at an event.
“A mother came up to me and she's like, I got a question for you. I got hit with this lunch bill. I called my brother. He got hit with a lunch bill…She started going through her property taxes and I go, that's a really great point.”
Walters began asking other parents their thoughts about school lunch bills.
“As I started bringing it up more, to a tee, every parent goes, yeah, I don't understand. I don't understand why we're paying all this money in taxes, and then quickly the conversation goes into the school. They have more superintendents than they ever have. They have more administrators than they've ever had.”
According to Walters, parents have shown overwhelming support for the new mandate through an online petition.
“We got 7,000 responses in three hours when we were like if you agree with this position, sign this petition and give us some anecdotes. 7,000. It’s just amazing stuff they’re telling us.”
Walters likens charging parents for school lunches to taking your child to camp and later getting a second bill for their meals. He states parents are being “triple taxed”, and many schools have prioritized jobs for adults over serving students.
“We're gonna hire our buddies, we're gonna hire a new assistant to the principal of whatever. We're going to hire all these new positions. And at the end we go, well, now we don't have enough money to pay for school lunches…I do think it's a triple tax on parents because they're taxed locally. Some of that money goes directly toward nutrition, then we get federal dollars that come back in the form of child nutrition dollars. And so they've already been taxed twice. Then for a school to turn around and go parents, actually here's a bill for that…I think it's just ridiculous, and I think it's going to stop.”
Increases in Ed Funding Used to Grow Administrative Kingdoms, Not Raise Teacher Pay or Feed Students
According to Walters, district administrative costs have risen sharply in recent years as overall funding for public education has increased. He believes a minimal cut in administrative expenses within district budgets would cover meals for all students.
“There is so much money in school budgets. We have seen dramatic administrative cost increases. We've seen dramatic administrative salary increases. So the more money we put in education, it hasn't gone toward kids, it hasn't gone toward teachers as a percentage, it's gone to administrative cost. We now hire more non-teachers than teachers in our school districts.”
OSDE data confirms the state’s annual cost per student for administrative expenses has risen 46% between 2017-18 to 2023-2024 (from $454.92 to $662.46).
Despite the increase, the Oklahoma Education Coalition, a collection of education unions and NGOs, continues to promote its longstanding push to hire more public school administrators based on irrelevant, 2012 data that contradicts other sources.
As suggested by Walters, data from the Center for Education Statistics (U.S. Department of Education) suggests the “number of district administrators in U.S. public schools has grown 87.6 percent between 2000 and 2019 compared to student growth at 7.6 percent and teacher growth at 8.7 percent”.
Despite Walters request for an education funding decrease for FY26, state legislators traditionally backed and influenced by the highly political school administrators, teachers, and school board associations (OEA/POE/CCOSA/OSSBA) recently passed all time high education allocations.
Available state data shows public funding per student has risen sharply in recent years, from $7,762 in 2017-18 to approximately $13,000 in the coming school year.
“Schools have record amounts of funding. They have increased their annual budgets by over a billion dollars in recurring revenue in the last four (4) years in the legislature,” says Walters.
With another funding increase for Oklahoma public education kicking in, Walters states schools can afford to make meals for students a priority.
According to state data, it cost $618 to feed each student during the entire 2023-24 school year. That figure includes breakfasts, lunches, milk, snacks and any other food services districts provide.
Most recent OSDE data reveals nearly half (48%) of total public education dollars now go to costs outside of the classroom (non-instructional expenses such as administration). The other 52% pays for instructional costs including classroom teacher salaries/benefits and supplies.
Of federal funds to Oklahoma’s schools, 60% are used outside of the classroom.
“I talked about this on the campaign trail two years ago. I heard it time and time again from parents that they're tired of administrative costs growing in a school.”
According to Walters, lowering administrative costs by just 6% would cover meals for all students.
“I just got off the phone with a retired Superintendent who said, literally on my way into work, you're 100% right, they can do it if they want to. And he was telling the school districts to prioritize. He said we’ve got a lot of kids in sports. We're in a high poverty area. We also give them a meal before sports.”
Walters sees recent increases in district-level administrative positions and salaries as unnecessarily growing bureaucracy that lessens work for those at the top.
“Then you've got these guys that want to hire their buddies instead. And just to be clear, you know why? Why does government grow? Why do bureaucracies grow? One of the reasons is because, if I'm a superintendent and I hire four (4) assistant superintendents and they hire their staff, you know what? I just now put away a lot of my job. There is not as much I have to do,” states Walters. “We have got to push back on this. The problem in education is not that we don't have enough money. The problem is that the money is not going where it should.”
Walters calls prioritizing students and teachers common sense. “We've got to control this bureaucracy,” states Walters. “Schools should get together every year, prioritize their budgets, support their kids, teachers and academics.”
Walters likens feeding all kids to the need for merit pay raises for high-performing, classroom teachers. He stresses both can be done at the local level but district administrators use complicated talk about funding restrictions to avoid taking action.
“These superintendents convolute everything. It really ticks me off when they talk to people like they can’t understand anything. That is intentional. That is how they gaslight people. When they want to prioritize things they do. And when they want to hire their buddy, they find a way. They might call him the Dean of Students. They might call him the Director of Student Services. They find a way to hire the people they want. They find a way to get the programs they want.”
Most OK Schools Eligible for Funds to Feed ALL Kids with Less Bureaucracy: Why Aren’t They?
Schools have funding options when it comes to feeding kids. The ‘free and reduced’ option involves individual family applications and considerable red tape to feed only some students. Another program eliminates much of the bureaucracy and layers of administration while allowing schools to provide meals for all students.
In Oklahoma, the vast majority of schools qualify for funding to feed all kids with less hassle but many districts choose not to apply.
The Free and Reduced Option (NSLP) - Feed Some, Red Tape & More Staff
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) was established in 1946 under the National School Lunch Act with dual goals of providing nutritious meals to children while supporting American agriculture. The program is administered at the federal level by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and at the state level by the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE).
Under the NSLP:
“Participating schools receive cash subsidies as well as nutritious, 100 percent domestic foods known as USDA Foods for each reimbursable meal they serve. In exchange, schools and institutions must serve lunches that meet the Federal meal pattern requirements and offer them at a free or reduced price to all eligible children.”
Like all things governmental over time, the program has grown a convoluted set of requirements and extensive reporting burdens that add personnel costs at the school, district, state and federal levels.
The Community Eligibility Option (CEP) - Feed All, Reduce Staff, Eliminate Stigma & Family Accounts
The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) was introduced as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. CEP allows economically disadvantaged areas the option of feeding free breakfast and lunch to all students while eliminating costly and labor intensive requirements.
Under CEP, there are no more qualifying applications back and forth between school and home, or daily tracking of who’s free, who’s reduced and who has to pay. There are also no more family accounts, bills and debt collection efforts. Reporting for reimbursement is greatly simplified at multiple governmental levels.
During the last school year, Oklahoma’s two largest physical districts, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, both fully participated in CEP. Each feed approximately 33,000 students at all sites. Lawton, Mid-Del, and Putnam City also participate in CEP.
Many other large districts, including Moore, Enid, Broken Arrow, Union, Mustang, Yukon and Jenks, are eligible but choose not to participate in CEP.
Districts such as Stillwater and Norman serve only about one-third of eligible sites under CEP. Reinforcing Walters’ assertions, the superintendent at Norman PS receives total annual compensation in excess of $400K per year but the district is not funding meals for all students.
Only a handful of Oklahoma school districts such as Edmond, Bixby and Deer Creek are within communities too affluent to qualify for CEP.
Over 90% of all physical school sites in the state are eligible for CEP benefits, yet only about half of eligible sites are taking advantage of the opportunity to feed all children. As a result, more than 320,000 eligible students are not being fed through CEP funding.
According to the USDA:
CEP is a non-pricing meal service option for schools/districts in low-income areas. “CEP allows the nation’s highest poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications.”
School and district eligibility is based upon the minimum identified student percentage (ISP) of enrolled student households participating in other entitlement programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
In 2023, the ISP threshold was lowered from 40% to 25% making more than 90% of Oklahoma schools eligible.
Districts Weigh CEP Options: School Boards Generally Not Involved
For currently non-participating districts like Moore and Enid, the USDA’s CEP online calculator shows Moore’s 40.72% ISP would qualify for 66.75% of meals to be reimbursed at the free rate ($4.43 lunch; $2.37 breakfast) and the remaining 33.25% at the paid rate ($0.42 lunch; $0.39 breakfast). Moore has 34 qualifying sites educating over 23,000 students.
Enid’s 53% ISP qualifies for 85% of meals to be reimbursed at the free rate (15% at paid rate) leaving little cost for the district to absorb.
V1SUT reached out to both Moore and Enid Schools to learn why those districts have yet to apply for CEP.
Moore School Board President Erin Morrison expressed child nutrition decisions are “not something we (board members) address directly”. Published board minutes from other districts suggest feeding decisions are commonly made by administration, not elected board members.
Morrison later relayed a message from Moore Superintendent Robert Romines indicating his district administrative team is actively discussing CEP participation at this time.
As of publication, Kelly Craig, Child Nutrition Director for Enid PS, had not responded to our inquiry.
Walters’ Mandate Ends Stigma of Free/Reduced, Embarrassment When Family Funds Run Short and Students Missing Meals
At most schools, a staff person must identify and track free and reduced meal recipients each day.
At some districts, students who must pay go unfed when the family meal account runs low. At others, families rack up debt for unpaid meal charges. The mandate to feed all students, whether through district budgets, CEP funding or both, ends all of those embarrassments and challenges.
During 2024, the Arby’s Foundation paid off $1 million of approximately $30 million in student lunch debt across America, including family accounts in five (5) Oklahoma school districts. The donation included $27,095 to Edmond PS (2,643 students), $21,090 to Clinton PS (433 students), $11,252 to Noble PS, $8,058 to Jay PS and $29,000 to Collinsville PS.
Walters shared a story from a mom who’s daughter went without lunch because the family forgot to put more money in their meal account.
“She said, I would put money in my kid’s account. My daughter came home one day. She was upset. Mom asked ‘Why?’ She goes, I didn’t have lunch, actually.…she felt like the rest of the day was terrible, she flunked a quiz. Mom asked me why is my kid experiencing that in 2025? And it’s not like the food wasn’t there. The food went in the garbage.”
“Parents shouldn’t have to worry, with the property taxes they’re paying and all the other taxes they’re paying to go to the school system,” states Walters. “Then to go, hold on, I need to put another $100 in the account. Frankly, it’s a rip-off.”
Walters also stressed school lunch costs can be significant for families with multiple children.
Is Walters Starting a National Trend in Feeding All Students? Why Some Oklahoma Districts May Resist
When asked if removing bureaucracy and feeding all kids as a first financial priority might become a national movement, Walter replied, “Yes, I hope so. You know, we’re the first state to do this…We allocated about $13,000 per kid, so if they got lunch every single day throughout the year, it’s less than $500.”
“I think it could sort of be a national trend. We’ve had a lot of folks reach out from other states since we announced this. We’re getting back to the basics and that’s where I appreciate President Trump so much on his position. Let’s get back to the basics.”
Beyond school lunches, Walters had much more to say on everything from breaking the grip of education unions to ridding schools of child perpetrators. More coming soon from V1SUT.
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Indoctrinates our children to depend on government handouts and creates lazy parents. Good grief pack a lunch
I’m concerned that current cafeteria options like green hot dogs, soy burgers, and cracker pizza lack the nutrition kids need for learning and growth. Research shows that diets high in processed foods can lead to poor focus and health outcomes. I propose reinstating the ‘You Are What You Eat’ poster to raise awareness and updating the menu with nutrient-rich options like whole-grain wraps, fresh fruits, and lean proteins, in line with physician recommendations. We should collaborate with the school to explore cost-effective ways to improve meals, such as partnering with local farms or hosting student taste tests. Can we discuss steps to prioritize healthier options for our kids? They can also learn to understand the economy of their choices.